November 7 - Picture Retakes
November 8 - Specials Schedule Switch
November 9 - Faculty Meeting 3:00
November 10 - Open grade window for mid term
November 10 - Veteran's Day Assembly
November 14 - Junior Beta Induction
November 15 - Close grade window for mid term
November 15 - Specials Schedule Switch (Julie Antill, Linda Null)
November 16 - Board Meeting @ 7:00
November 17 - Mid terms go home
Nov. 20 - 24 Thanksgiving Vacation
November 27 No School - Collaboration Day
December 4 - Intruder Drill @ 8:00
December 4 - Faculty Christmas Party @ Holiday Inn @ 6:00
December 5 - Honor Choir Christmas Concert @ Westwood Baptist @ 6:30
December 7 - Faculty Meeting @ 3:00
December 14 - Board Meeting @ 7:00
December 19 - End of 2nd Quarter
December 20 - January 3 - Christmas Break
Last collaboration day, I asked you to answer a few questions. The first question: What makes our school great? Here are some of the answers I got:
People who care about kids.
The camaraderie of our staff and the caring attitude they have toward students.
Our school is great because it includes all kids no matter what their home life is like.
Willingness to help each other.
Teamwork.
In fact, with around 90 responses, the vast majority of them focused on teamwork, great staff, and people who care about students. Of course there are always some who are unhappy regardless of what is going on (we had two), but by and large, our staff feels like our school is great and has a lot to offer our students.
The second question was, What is one thing we could be better at with our students? Several of these focused on discipline, consistency, and classroom management. Here are some examples:
Giving students high expectations.
Take kids from where they are to where they can be.
Approaching students less harshly.
Have them feel that they belong to all of us.
Think about what their life might be like.
Again, we had responses that were less than positive, but the majority feel like we need to take the time to build relationships and hold high expectations for our students.
The third question was, What is one thing we could do better at with our parents? The responses to this focused on communication and listening with a lot of people suggesting we have more parent nights to increase parent involvement. Some responses include:
More ways to get them into our school: fall festivals, fundraiser dinners, etc.
Contact them with positives as well as negatives.
More than one set of conferences and set time for open house to improve communication.
Remembering they have issues too. They struggle dealing with their kid's behavior.
More family events.
Overwhelmingly, we feel like we need to communicate more and about the positives.
The fourth question was, What is one thing we could do better with each other? The responses to this question seemed to focus on communicating, being honest and open, and respecting each other. Here are a few responses:
Empathic - We need to remember that your way is not the only way.
Care for each other. Learning to be open minded and understanding of each other.
Teamwork
Don't judge, adjust attitudes.
Value one another and respect one another.
Of course there were many others, but being allies and advocates for each other was the theme of most of the responses. If you want to see what others wrote, they are in a stack in my office.
PLC
The ELA teams have been working on a lesson study which has generated a lot of discussion about instruction. It has been great to hear the conversations about engaging students and how do you determine if they are "getting it". Over the last three years, our growth plans have all been focused on student engagement, critical thinking, and student goals. Your PLC meetings are a time to focus on these things as well and the lesson study has provided an avenue to do that.
We aren't doing a lesson study at this time in math, but I would love to hear those same kinds of conversation. We need to have conversations about how we plan to engage our students in mathematics. We need to have conversations about how are we going to get students to think about their thinking and how we will know they are doing this. We need to look at student work to see if they are "getting it".
Linda Null has been working with us for a little while now, but I haven't clearly defined what her role is to be. I would like for each math team to add an item to their agenda for a discussion on instruction. This doesn't have to be long and drawn out. Set aside a few minutes to talk about how your lessons are getting students to think and what that means for future lessons. We are all about growing and getting better here:)
This is Linda's strength. She can help us fine tune our instructional strategies so that we are hitting the conceptual components of our skills. So, on the November 15th, when Linda comes back, plan to set aside some time to talk about what and how you are teaching. Bring some student work for us to look at. And, bring questions for Linda.
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